The 3Ms of Marketing and what we can all learn from Colin!

Why choosing the right media to spread your marketing messages is crucial!

Posted

18-02-2019 •

8

min read

What are the 3 Ms of Marketing?

They are, Market, Message and Media.

Market is identifying who your perfect market is and creating customer avatars

Message is all about putting out messages that resonate with your market

Media is all about where your market ‘hangs out’ and making sure you hang out in the same places so they can hear your message.

Who is Colin and what can we learn from him?

You may know the film, Love Actually. In the film we follow the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various, loosely interrelated tales. The story is set during a frantic month before Christmas, in London. Colin Frissel is one of the characters in the film.

Colin had no luck with the ladies in England. He is convinced that his Britishness (his USP) will be an asset in America so he decides to go to there to try his luck. It turns out to be the right decision because he gets not just 1 but 4 girls very interested in him, on his first night there.

So, what can we all learn about marketing from Colin? He was clear on his unique offering (his Britishness), his Market was clear (women), his Message was clear (‘I’m a sex God’) but the Media he originally chose to put out his message in (England) was crowded and he didn’t’ stand out enough to connect with his market. He identified where his media needed to be, America.

So, are you putting your message out in the right media to optimise your success? In this blog, we are going to explore social media as the Media to ‘hang out’ in.

Choosing the right social media platform

This will be based on both who your market is and which platform is best to showcase your product or service.

It is crucial to really understand who your market is. Creating customer avatars are a great way to help identify exactly who they are.

Once you identify your market, you can choose the right platform to use.

Statistics to guide you

According to Statista, the Statistics Portal, at the beginning of 2017, there were over 39 million social media users, with estimates going up to 42 million users.

In November 2016, 67% of online adults were reached by Facebook alone.

Here is a table showing five platforms and their users by age, in the UK in 2017:

This table shows how social media account set ups have increased by gender, between 2010 and 2017:

Finally, this table shows the increase in social media use by businesses between 2012 and 2016. The biggest increase being in the 10-49 employee bracket (up 21%) So, more smaller businesses are using it as part of their marketing strategy:

Strengths and Weaknesses of each social network

Facebook

Being the largest platform in the world, it’s where consumers spend most of their online social time. According to comScore, Facebook keeps the average user onsite for 7 hours each month!

Facebook is a very powerful marketing platform because of its social graph and reach. In 2018, there were an estimated 39.2 million users in the UK alone! Its social graph allows it to deeply understand it’s users and how they interact with their friends. Using this data, Facebook can create advertising products that really resonate with your target market.

You can post virtually anything from images to videos and text.

Twitter

This is a fast-paced, rapidly changing platform that is great if your business is the same. You can post breaking news, important messages or announcements and keep your customers up-to-date quickly.

It is easy to work out your audience’s interests through their tweets, retweets and hashtags so you can engage with them. Use @mentions, retweets and possibly direct messages to build brand relationships.

Pinterest

This is a visual-based platform with more than 100 million active monthly users, so if you sell any type of product, you really need to be using it.

According to Shopify, 90% of users plan their purchases using Pinterest.

YouTube

If you give video-base content, like our weekly SAS Business Box Bites, YouTube is the platform to use for things like DIY videos, tutorials and educational information on it.

It differs from other social networks because the user actively searches for information rather than being shown it on a’ newsfeed’

LinkedIn

This is a must for B2B businesses as it is very effective platform for brand awareness, lead generation, networking, industry education and community building. It is important to note that you should avoid using it to push sales. Also, your profile should be optimised and your content should be high quality.

Summary

Choosing the right social media platforms will optimise your results but once you have decided where to ‘hang out’ the hard work really starts.

Before you launch your business marketing activities on your chosen platforms, you need to: